Stories and Tales is Volume V of the
University of South Carolina’s Centennial
Edition of the writings of William Gilmore Simms[1]. This volume contains fifteen stories and
tales, chronologically presented, collecting writings from all phases of
Simms’s career. [2] Simms wrote short fiction, often of wildly
inconsistent quality, throughout his long career; his best fiction was praised
by Poe, while his poorer fiction was often self-consciously born out of
economic necessity[3]. Simms published his short fiction widely both
in a variety of periodicals and multiple book-length ...